Tumkur: Elected Women Representatives Empowerment

The Hunger Project-India (THP) uses a multi-pronged strategy to strengthen the political leadership and participation of elected women representatives (EWRs) in Gram Panchayats (GPs). The strategies aim to build the capacities of individual EWRs and an enabling environment for them to exercise their leadership effectively. The Hunger Project facilitates the leadership of these women leaders with key interventions in each year of their five year tenures: Year One: Conduct Women's Leadership Workshops (WLW) and follow-up to strengthen skills of women leaders and create bottom-up plans for villages to meet basic needs ; Year Two:Provide technical inputs through need based workshops (NBW) and facilitate the formation of federations at the cluster and block level; Year Three:Foster awareness among the community about their rights and issues within the Panchayats ; Year Four:Focus on strengthening local and state level advocacy to overcome bureaucratic obstacles and ensuring the successful implementation of plans, and; Year Five: Carry out campaigns to encourage participation of women as voters and as candidates in the run-up to elections.
The Hunger Project has been working with elected women representatives in the state of Karnataka since 2001, holding women’s leadership workshops and building capacity among elected women representatives from various districts of the region. The Hunger Project has focused on expanding partnerships at the grassroot level, enabling a larger percentage of elected women representatives in various districts to be engaged through the Women’s Leadership Workshops. These programs are currently active in fifteen districts.
Tumkur is a district in the southwestern state of Karnataka. THP works in 12 Gram Panchayats in one block in Tumkur: Madhugiri. In 2016, 5 Federation Meetings on Block level took place, with 163 Elected Women Representatives participating.

Related Resources

Activities

The Hunger Project, in partnership with many local civil society organizations, has trained more than 79,000 elected women representatives. Examples of the activities within this strategy include:
Empowering Women in Elections: To encourage voter participation among women and nominations of potential women leaders, The Hunger Project conducts intensive pre-election campaigns. SWEEP (Strengthening Women's Empowerment in Electoral Processes) campaigns include meetings, film screenings, street plays, door-to-door contacts, trainings and distribution of posters and pamphlets.
Federations for Advocacy and Mutual Empowerment: To empower women leaders and their communities, The Hunger Project supports the formation of federations among their elected leaders to voice their concerns as a collective unit.
Mobilizing the Media to Support Women Leaders: To highlight the work of women leaders and Panchayati Raj, The Hunger Project actively engages with the media and annually awards the Sarojini Naidu Prize, showcasing the efforts being made by the elected women and recognizes three journalists reporting on their work in Hindi, English and other Indian language categories.

Additional information

The Hunger Project has been active in India since 1984 and currently works across seven states, 54 districts, and more than 2000 village clusters (panchayats). In response to the 73rd Amendment to the Indian Constitution that mandated that one-third of all seats in panchayats be reserved for women, The Hunger Project developed its comprehensive strategy, the Panchayati Raj Campaign. The Hunger Project's approach of mobilizing people for self-reliant action, empowering women as key change agents and engaging with local government has provided the solid foundation upon which to expand local development initiatives throughout the seven states of India in which THP is present.